Who Is Vera Kelly?

What has drawn me first to Rosalie Knecht’s ‘Who is Vera Kelly?’ was the cover – retro and atmospheric with the catchy title made me want to read this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. 

Set in the 1960s, ‘Who is Vera Kelly?’ follows young Vera, a woman in her twenties, who after many wrong choices and messy events, gets recruited by CIA and sent on a mission to Argentina, in the middle of political upheaval. She is tasked with befriending and spying on a group of students in Buenos Aires, who presumably are being recruited for KGB. 

‘Who is Vera Kelly?’ has double-narrative – we follow Vera both on her assignment, but w also get short glimpses into Vera’s background. While interesting, I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed that much of Vera’s backstory, at least not in this form, but on overall, I have enjoyed the writing style a lot.

What I liked the most about Rosalie Knecht’s book was how character-driven it was. Most thrillers and mysteries are fast-paced narratives focusing predominantly on the action. ‘Who is Vera Kelly?’ though full of events and often extremely dangerous and stressful situations for the main character, is slower, more focused on Vera herself – exploring her journey, her thoughts and feelings. In many ways, Rosalie Knecht’s is more literary than most books from the genre, but it is something I have enjoyed here very much. It has added another layer to the atmosphere of the book – both the setting and the character had felt more alive as a result.

After a turbulent youth, the break-up with her mom, some time in a detention centre and no plan what to do with her life, Vera ends up in New York, trying this job and that job. One day, she is addressed by a man who noticed her quick wits and technical understanding. He is a recruiter for the CIA and thus, a couple of years later, Vera finds herself in Buenos Aires with the fake ID of a Canadian student named Anne. Her mission: spy on a group of students who the CIA believes to work for the KGB in order to ally Argentina with the Soviet Union. Vera/Anne makes befriends Ramón and Victoria who have radicalised and are disappointed by how the country is governed. Yet, then suddenly, the military ventures a coup d’état and General Onganía’s men take over. Vera/Anne is stuck, foreigners are not allowed to travel anymore, her local contact betrayed her and she gets the runaround by her superior within the CIA. Either she acts for herself, or she is lost.

“Who Is Vera Kelly?” is not an easy to classify novel. It is a kind of bildungsroman, we get to know young Vera who protests against her mother and school and has to grow up the hard way. A young woman who is looking for her place in life and oscillates between different options without a clear aim. On the other hand, the novel is a political or spy crime novel since we have Vera/Anne prying on rebellious students to uncover any KGB involvement in Argentina and also the time after the Revolución which brings the military dictatorship and severe restrictions for the people. 

At both times of her life, Vera is lonely, her affection for her school friend is not returned and also when she arrives in New York does she not find a person to really bond with. This qualifies for a lone spy job abroad where she is left to her own devices and cannot really build deep friendships. The experiences she made as a teenager, especially with her mother who kicked her out into the detention centre and did not show any interest in her, gave her quite a good education for her mission. 

Vera is not a classic heroine, she is no James Bond and does not compare to any other dazzling movie character. She is actually the perfect spy, she blends in smoothly, goes unnoticed and her technical skills allow her even without any sophisticated equipment to get the information she needs. When she finds herself deserted of all contacts and help, she is close to breaking down but then shows her real strength. She just goes on and finds a solution to escape.

A perfect blend of a young woman who is far ahead of her time in terms of emancipation and going her own way and a world in political turmoil. The plot becomes increasingly suspenseful and thus is a real page-turner.

In the back of my copy of Who Is Vera Kelly? is one of those question sets designed to guide a reading group. One of the questions which caught my eye was ‘Lots of girls grew up reading Harriet the Spy and Nancy Drew novels. Why do you think there are so few adult spy novels starring female spies?’.

It is a good question and the reason I was drawn to it is because the experience of reading Who Is Vera Kelly? was a very unusual one; firstly because there are so few female spies in adult novels, and because there are even fewer queer ones. In Who Is Vera Kelly?, Rosalie Knecht has created a world that manages to feel very familiar whilst also being fresh and exciting merely by who her main character is.

Who Is Vera Kelly? follows our eponymous hero on her first big mission in 1960s Beunos Aires, as she attempts to root out a KGB plot in the tumultuous Argentine political scene, all whilst posing as a Canadian student. Interspersed with these scenes are flashbacks to her life leading up to how she was recruited to the CIA, highlighting her poor relationship with her mother and the friendship with Joanne which seems to have been the main driver in many of the decisions Vera made along the way. It’s a relatively simple plot, not overly complicated as a lot of spy novels can be, but no less of a page turner because of it.

Where Knecht’s real strength lies though is creating the world of her novel. When I was younger, I was devoted to Graham Greene, and Who Is Vera Kelly? gave me a lot of the same vibes as reading his work. The sense of place is very strong, with sharp observations of Argentine life and the people who surround Vera. It is immersive writing in the very best way; not over descriptive, sketching in just enough details to paint a picture without being flowery. Knecht handles the world through Vera’s eyes as though she has been doing it for a long time.

And of course, what is really a bit of a revelation is that we are looking through Vera’s eyes at all. As the reading guide question says, there are not many novels like this with female protagonists, especially written in this way which seemingly deliberately invokes the tone of some of the very best spy novels of the past. The reason that this world feels familiar to me is because of the legacy of literature in which Who Is Vera Kelly? can fit, but the freshness comes from Vera being a woman, and being queer too.

In fact, I would say that more of Vera’s character comes from being queer than it does from being a woman. She knows how to negotiate the world as a woman; she is self-assured and confident. We could have been easily treated to any number of scenes in which Vera is forced to be afraid of the men around her, but I can’t think of a single time that happened in this novel. She glides through even the most dangerous situations at least appearing to be in control to the people around her.

No, Vera’s true struggle comes in her sexuality. She is afraid to find the underground gay scene in Beunos Aires because that is the thing that could leave her open and vulnerable if anyone finds out. In the flashback scenes, we watch a young Vera first discover and then explore her sexuality. She is very much enduring the early queer experience of not knowing why she is so sad to be separated from her friend, or wondering why her letters to the same friend look like love letters.

The thing that makes Who Is Vera Kelly? such a great read is that we need queer stories exactly like it. Coming out stories have their place, of course, but we are in desperate need always of stories which do not have sexuality or gender identity as the main focus, but rather as part of the rich tapestry of a character, just as in novels with cishet main characters. By invoking these old classic spy thrillers in her tone and world building, but introducing a character who is a queer woman to explore it, Knecht has done a great job of providing exactly one of these highly necessary stories.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I expected the book to start in NYC, because the summary says so, but the book actually jumps back and forth between Vera's teenage years up to her NYC move and the "newer" (1965/1966) time line.
Vera is in Argentina for the CIA trying to sniff out communists.
I loved Vera as a protagonist, and was very disheartened by the reality of a lesbian woman in the 60s who could be fired just for loving who she loved. I know it's still not the case everywhere in the world and that is so so sad.
I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good spy-novel. During this unending epidemic, it's so lovely to be able to travel through books.
It's a historical novel, though I am not familiar with Argentina in that time, so I can't say if it's accurate but from what I googled it seemed to be.
The book made me want to read the sequel straight away, which in a different way maybe was even better.

3.75

 Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read an e-Arc of this book on NetGalley! 

Who Is Vera Kelly?  is a spy thriller following Vera Kelly, a young adult on a mission in Argentina, attempting to blend in with the gay student crowd and work surveillance on the uprising on the horizon. Despite being described as a thriller, this novel is - in my opinion - more of a character piece, it's more about seeing how Vera acts and works whilst maintaining her cover; reminiscent of the style of  The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

The book is told in dual timelines, the 1966 Argentina and flashbacks to Vera's childhood, which I found to be extremely interesting and gave Vera such depth and connection. Seeing the ways in which her young romances echoed her later decisions was perfectly done. The whole cast of characters was really interesting, particularly Victoria - the only thing I would have loved to see is some of Victoria's POV, I think that would have been really interesting.

As someone who doesn't typically read spy-related novels, I found Who Is Vera Kelly?  to be a perfect entry into the genre, bridging the gap between dramatic fiction and the high-action spy thrillers you might expect. 

I would highly recommend this book for readers looking to enter the spy-thriller genre, and fans of the style of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.